The first Android phone in the UK was the T-Mobile G1. An excellent first effort, but lacking in a few important areas.

It had a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, but NO built-in word processor. In fact, the G1 cannot be used without logging into a Google account, so the omission of straightforward connection to Google Docs, seemed unforgivable. Google Calendar, Google Contacts, and Google Email are all installed, so why Google Docs wasn't, was a real downer. A Qwerty keyboard, and no word processor. Shit planning.

It lacked internal memory for apps. Whereas the iPhone has 8GB-16GB, the G1 had only 256MB, (yes, not even 1GB) available for apps! A 16GB MicroSD card can be installed, but no apps will have access to this memory. A very serious hurdle for developers.

The apps store only had a reasonable amount of apps, in comparison to the Apple iStore, but many free apps for the G1, are paid-for only, on the iPhone.

hero's good, i've got one ;-) there's lots of info on the web about what you can do with it, e.g. at xda-developers forum - wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php­?pagename=HTC_Hero - which also has lots of info about other phones, too. the one thing that hasn't been mentioned by GA2G is that the android software is a lot more open than the iPhone software (which runs proprietary, closed-source mac software), although there are still some licensing issues and one of the major hackers was served with a cease and desist notice a while back by google.

The C&D issued to Cyanogen was simply because his was distributing Google's proprietary apps within his custom ROMS. The workaround? Backup Google's apps, flash the phone with custom ROM, restore Google apps.

The custom Galaxo ROM I recently installed onto my Samsung i7500 has this backup/restore of Gapps done for you automatically. By changing process priorities and some other little hacks this ROM is faster than the stock firmware (the latest of which is II5).